During a highly charged presidential campaign, a bomb explodes, unleashing panic and a wave of recriminations. Then a Chinese Y-8 reconnaissance aircraft vanishes in Taiwan’s eastern waters. Under the guise of search and rescue, Beijing deploys a massive air and naval force that quarantines the island. Reeling from forced sequestration, Taiwanese society suffers a deluge of propaganda and misinformation, pitting husband against wife, father against son. Political and financial interests foment infighting. By the time the first People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops arrive, the island has defeated itself.
On Aug. 2, people across Taiwan tuned into this dystopian vision, which debuted on Taiwanese TV as the acclaimed drama Zero Day Attack, courtesy of showrunner Cheng Hsin-Mei. Over ten hour-long episodes, Zero Day Attack offers a forensic exploration of how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could manifest, from the political and religious intrigue to media infiltration and economic manipulation. And while speculative fiction, Zero Day Attack is rooted in events already unfolding.
“If you go to the front lines, you can really feel the tension,” Cheng says in her central Taipei office. “China is getting ready to do something.”
Taiwan politically split from the mainland following China’s 1945-49 civil war and its “reunification” has been dubbed a “historical inevitability” by Chinese strongman Xi Jinping. The PLA regularly dispatches scores of warplanes close to the self-ruling island of 24 million, including a record 153 aircraft in a 25-hour period last October, in what Adm. Sam Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress were “dress rehearsals for forced unification.”
The specter of war is difficult to reconcile with the carefree bustle of downtown Taipei, where on a cool June evening bickering families and doe-eyed couples throng the city’s night markets as ever before. But the return of Donald Trump to the White House has injected an extra degree of anxiety over the island’s future.
Few places are scrutinizing Trump’s flip flops over U.S. backing for Ukraine with greater apprehension than Taiwan, whose autonomy and cherished democracy have been underwritten by informal American backing. While the U.S. switched diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, Washington maintains a bevy of ties with Taiwan and is obliged by act of Congress to supply weapons needed for its defense. But Taiwan fears that the combination of Trump’s diffidence toward alliances and global acclaim as a war-ending “man of peace” may embolden Xi into finally completing the revolution started by the only leader who’s wielded similarly unchecked power, Mao Zedong.
Xi has described bringing Taiwan back into the fold as the “essence” of the country’s “rejuvenation,” which must be achieved by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s five-starred flag first fluttering over Beijing’s Forbidden City. “Taiwan will have to come back,” one senior PLA officer tells TIME. “How can the strongest nation on earth not take back what it claims to be its own territory?”
In a May speech to the Shangri-la Dialogue security forum in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Xi had “ordered his military to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027”—a timeline first proposed by former U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Philip Davidson—though warned that an assault “could be imminent.” In remarks that pointedly failed to dial down the temperature, Beijing responded by warning Washington “must never play with fire on [the Taiwan] question,” which is “entirely China’s internal affair.”
Oriana Skylar Mastro, a professor and expert on China’s military at Stanford University, notes that the tenor of her conversations with CCP and PLA officials have markedly changed in recent months. “Before they would say, ‘we’re so patient, there’s nothing to worry about, Chinese people don’t kill Chinese people,’” says Mastro. She was struck by “more inevitability” in discussions during her last visit to Beijing in May. “They would say, ‘why are you guys obsessed with 2027 when it can happen at any time?’”
If Xi is genuine in his desire to “complete the revolution,” the question is whether he will ever have a better opportunity than before Trump leaves office. He has vowed not to risk American lives in foreign wars, alienated allies with an internecine trade war, and culled the top China experts from policy circles. And for Xi, the clock is ticking. At home, young Chinese care more about scarce college-level jobs than reclaiming a sweet potato-shaped island cast adrift before their parents were even born. Meanwhile in Taiwan, already minuscule support for reunification dwindles with every passing year.
There are impediments, of course. Invading Taiwan would be the most complex military operation in modern history, dwarfing even the D-Day landing of World War II, and must be coordinated by generals who have not waged a major war in over seven decades. Then there is the economic fallout from excising the world’s top exporter of advanced semiconductors from global supply chains, which Bloomberg Economics estimates at $10 trillion. That’s some 10% of global GDP, far more than the shock from the war in Ukraine or the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, Congress is united in firmly backing Taiwan’s de facto independence. However, until recently, the same applied to support for Ukraine, and that sentiment has rapidly shifted among Republicans in thrall to the mercurial commander-in-chief. In July, a scheduled stopover by Taiwan President Lai Ching-te in New York City was canceled by the U.S. reportedly following a request from Beijing.
In his Singapore speech, while reaffirming U.S. support for the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, Hegseth showed his hand when he admitted: “My job is to create and maintain decision space for President Trump, not to purport to make decisions on his behalf.”
Against this backdrop, Taiwan is frantically attempting to raise the cost of conflict. It has purchased billions of dollars of missile systems, fighter jets, and other defensive equipment from the U.S., while ramping up indigenous defense industry with a focus on asymmetric warfare, such as drones and unmanned submersibles.
Compulsory national service has been extended from four months to a year for all young Taiwanese men. In September last year, Lai founded a Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee to advise government departments regarding crisis management while also planning for disruption to critical infrastructure, supply distribution, and information and financial network protection.
“The consensus is that Taiwan is under a bigger threat than ever,” says Tseng Poyu, a Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee member and researcher for the Doublethink Lab NGO, which tracks and fights disinformation. “Tensions right now are at an all-time high.”
What Modern War Would Really Look Like
Things have been heated before, of course, not least on Taiwan’s outlying islands, some of whom sit less than 2 miles from the PRC. As Cold War frontiers go, that’s considerably less than the 90 miles from Cuba to Key West, and even narrower than the 2.5-mile Korean DMZ. Over the decades, the periodic exchange of rockets forced people on both sides to hunker down into deep defensive tunnels hewn from the solid rock. During times of peace, a propaganda battle took over, with gewgaws such as watches and biscuits dispatched by balloon to flaunt each side’s supposed affluence.
Taiwan’s island of Kinmen lies 3 miles from China’s port city of Xiamen, whose glittering skyscrapers loom through the sea fog. Kinmen’s beaches remain studded by rusting defensive spikes and even a half-submerged tank, whose corroded turret forms the backdrop for tourist selfies. Yet there is a reason why Kinmen remains to this day ruled by Taipei—some 140 miles away—despite being encircled on three sides by the PRC. Put simply, it serves to keep the fight alive.
